The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media’s coverage of how people are using Meta’s Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.”
more at: @feed@404media.co
You know what sucks?
In that AR glasses, in theory, are such an interesting technology with lots of potential, and certainly a piece of tech I would love to have and work with and on. Not to secretly record people, but to, well… augment my field of view with whatever digital tools or displays I would like. It would be so useful
It’s honestly kinda saddening to me that it most likely will get completely ruined by our current toxic relationship to technology. A step towards our ever increasing cyberdystopia, and not towards enchanting our limited lives
Obviously either way I don’t trust Meta, but an open-hardware device running a FOSS AR system? It would be nice…
I still hold out hope that this somehow could be resolved, and I would love to contribute to open software for these devices. Maybe one day soon-ish I will. My expertise should be well applicable, after all
Drop the cameras and microphones and replace them with a couple accelerometers and gyros. Paired with your phone’s GPS tracking, the glasses can tell where you’re looking without actually seeing anything. You can get handy features like a floating ‘turn here’ sign over your exit while driving with GPS navigation without recording anyone or anything at any time. Better battery life, too.
Tbh I don’t even mind cameras that much if they were entirely controlled by the individuals themselves. I have a much bigger issue with it when you’re streaming my facial recognition data to Evil Megacorp 2™ servers that also feed directly to the “Not Spying… Again” agency, though.